Hair unapparent

I condemn the practice of confusing what women look like with who they are. Having said that, I have a problem with blondes. First, they're ubiquitous. Blonde is everywhere, rampantly colonising the heads of women, the follicular equivalent of grey squirrels ousting noble reds (that is, us increasingly rare brunettes). There are just too many blondes knocking about and it's getting dull. Look around you for proof. Look in the mirror for more.

Too many types

But more tedious than that are present trends in blondeness. I don't take issue with the peroxide glamour blonde. It's not a look towards which I aspire but those in possession of a bright, almost-white, extension-augmented mane of hair at least know what they're about — attention-seeking and footballers. That's OK. I don't mind the Fashion Blondes either. The Agyness Deyn-alikes, with their bleached crops, half-gamine cutie, half 1980s throwback. What I object to is that apology of a hair colour that seems obligatory for a certain kind of thirtysomething and fortysomething women.

Blonde by design

These women start their gentle descent into middle age good and brunette and slide limply into a state of mid-blonde, with caramel low lights through the course of a decade. They'll pretend it happened to them by accident. They'll pretend they never wanted to be this blonde. They'll return from their salons saying things such as: "Oh no! It's much blonder than I wanted it to be! I told Sean not blonde, not blonde at all ... I did! But look at it!" And then they'll go back for more of the same six weeks later.

In denial mode

Worse, they seem to believe their blondeness is a temporary state; they'll never let you describe them as "a blonde", even though they are. They're blonde denialists. They are default blondes. Blondettes, because they still identify as brunettes. But they are not brunette. They are definitely blonde.

This sort of blonde contributes to pervading trends in drabness, in bland. This is the unimaginative, uninspiring blonde of Anthea Turner, of Kate Garraway. It is School Run Blonde. The hairdo equivalent of painting every room in your home magnolia in the interest of never upsetting anyone, never asserting your identity too forcefully and never straying too far from the righteous cause of being inoffensive.

Seven-hour trial

I tried out blonde for a day. I wore a wig for seven hours. I did this because I had been assured by blonde friends that if I was blonde, I would get it. A world of wonder would open up to me. I would be more highly prized by the world in general and the advertising industry in particular.

Once I was blonde, men would prostrate themselves in front of me. Women would assume I was softer, gentler and less intimidating; that I took myself less seriously. Everyone would like me more blonde — everyone, that is, apart from other blonde women, who would know exactly what my game was. Blonde clichés are witless, thoughtless anodyne — and really pervasive. As I prepared to experience the world as a blonde, I did wonder if there might be some truth to them.

Turns out there is none. And although this is possibly because my wig makes me look like a cross between Iggy Pop and Bob, the serial killer from David Lynch's Twin Peaks, it might also be because blonde is not that big a deal any more; you know, what with it being so common. People pay me marginally more attention than usual. White van men (the magpies of the letching world, indiscriminate and excited by anything that sparkles within their line of vision) slow up for a better look. No one else gives a fig.

Trying out blonde did nothing to unsettle my belief in the innate superiority of brunettes. Are we smarter? Yes. Smarter, with a broader base of interests and greater financial acumen, because we spend less time reading dross at the hairdressers and less money paying for our roots to be retouched.

No chip off the block

There's no excuse for blondeness. No one's naturally blonde any more. Being blonde takes an enormous and conscious effort. Blondes know exactly what they're doing and they invest heavily in it. Therefore, blondeness must be important to them. Perhaps it is legitimate to make generalisations about their character.

But then — maybe I'm wrong. A 24-year-old pop star is making me reconsider my position: Lily Allen, who changes her hair colour on what seems to be an hourly basis. She has been papped with pink, white-blonde and jet-black hair in the past two months alone. She appeared on the covers of two glossy magazines. On one of them, she was blonde; on the other brunette. Allen does it because it amuses her but the subtext is interesting: Don't even think about defining me by my hair colour.

Changing views

Maybe the blonde-versus-brunette debate ends with Allen and her generation. Those girls are more evolved than either the middle-aged blondette brigade or militant brunettes like me. They know their identity and hair colour are unrelated. That's why they happily change one without feeling they might be compromising the other. They know that that would be plain stupid.